This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. This morning I stood in the doorway before the talk. Most of you were here. And I decided to, which I usually do, feel what's in the air, what's in the room today. There's a lot going on, isn't there? It's a sunny day.

[01:02]

But it's not just sunny, is it? There's also our worries and concerns, our cares, our joys and sorrows, our griefs, sickness and health. Some of us are well, some of us aren't so well. Some of us have a family or friends who are not so well. And of course, sometimes I think, you know, you wouldn't be here if everything had just been going along perfectly in your life, would you? Something draws you.

[02:05]

There's following, as Rumi says, let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really want. So here you are. What is it you really want? So that kind of, in Zen, we call the mind that seeks the way. So that mind that seeks the way is also here. in the room, along with all the joys and sorrows, the things that haven't worked out so well. And then I got up here, you know, and I brightly kicked over the cup of water. Sad to say, I didn't do it on purpose. But I realized something was at work because yesterday one of my friends and students, Marjorie, she said at Tassajara she broke one of the kerosene lanterns, the globe, on the altar.

[03:16]

Big mess. And so then she assessed the damage and started cleaning up. And then she didn't want to go to the Zendo the next day because she was worried what they would think of her. you, Marjorie. In front of a room full of people. Not just in the anonymity of a quiet Zendo with one other person. Excuse me for not breaking it. So, so much is in the air today, and I thought we could take a few moments to breathe it all into our heart. Your heart, my heart.

[04:19]

The heart of the world. Zen master Rinzai said, the Dharma is the law of the heart. The heart which has no form, but which contains everything. So... See if you can breathe what of everything in the room, you can breathe it into your heart. This is finally a wonderful gift we can give ourselves, we can give to others, to hold everything, to breathe everything into our heart.

[05:32]

And to hold everything in our heart. You know, Solzhenitsyn said, wouldn't it be simple if you could just draw a line between what was good and what was evil? And then eliminate the evil. and promote the good. Wouldn't that be terrific? But the line between the good and the evil goes right down the middle of each person's heart. And why would you want to get rid of half yourself? And this is also, of course, what Zen calls the disease, disease of mind, of human mind, is to put one mind against the other and side. Wouldn't it be easy if that worked? Mmm.

[06:34]

And then the birds are singing in our hearts today. Huh? How about that? Lately, I've been thinking about how much, or, you know, there's so many ways to talk about it, of course, but the fact that we can, we have a choice, or originally freedom, where to put our attention. Where will we put our attention? And you know, nowadays, of course, it's harder and harder for kids to realize they have this choice or freedom because our culture has not just now television, but video games and all kinds of things to, you know, which will grab your attention and are so engaging.

[07:57]

And then you can learn to spend money. You pay money to have your attention grabbed, to have your attention taken from you. Give us money and then you won't have to be burdened with your attention. We will engage it and give it something to do for hours. And, you know, it's nice to have your attention grabbed once in a while, but if that's what we're doing here, I mean, we're missing a lot. And we don't have much opportunity to just sit with everything in the room, everything in the world, all the success and failure and things that are working out and things that aren't and heartaches. relationship.

[09:02]

And we can't fix everything. So what will we do? How will you choose? You know, you have a choice. Where will you put your attention? Where will you... And, you know, at some point we call this a gift. Where will you give? You know, sometimes when we teach people to meditate, we say, pay attention to your breath. Like, if you paid attention, you would get a return on your investment for all the payment you make. You know, something would come back. But more than that is, what do you choose to give your attention to? You know, will you And we can give our attention to our body, our breath, the sensations of our walking, sitting, our presence here.

[10:12]

And there are various habits we get into thinking what's important to give attention to. Some of us, and sometimes, and, you know, I'm pretty familiar with all of, a lot of different habits we have. Because I have them. But one of them is to, you know, for instance, look for the next thing that's wrong. And then see if you can fix it. Maybe you have a cut or a hurt or a pain, and then how will you fix it? Or maybe somebody, your friend or your family, I want to help you. I want to fix you. I want to cure you. I want to save you. I want to rescue you. So is that being a bodhisattva? A bodhisattva who benefits others?

[11:18]

Or is there such a thing as what Trungpa Rinpoche used to call fools Fool compassion, foolish compassion, idiot compassion. What can you actually do for yourself or for others? We're sitting here in the midst of everything. How much are we going to fix? So it's pretty important to look very carefully at what you can actually do something about. and there's a certain amount of discomfort, unease, it will probably be a benefit to us to develop some facility or capacity to be with it rather than thinking we should fix it. Because probably until you fix it, you're not going to breathe easily. You'll hold your breath a little bit until it's fixed.

[12:18]

And then it's all the more painful, isn't it? Because you're holding your breath and we can't breathe easy. Breathe easily. Breathe easily with everything in the room. So when it comes to our attention, on one hand we have a choice, and where will we put it? What will we give our attention to? And rather than having it just grabbed by the loudest phenomena in the vicinity, whether it's a plane going overhead or a television, a video, what will grab our attention?

[13:36]

What about, where would we put it? What would we give it to? So this is a big study, and really the study of a lifetime. Where do you want to put your attention, to give your attention? What will you give it to? And if you want to, which, you know, Buddhism suggests, excuse me, Buddhism suggests, of course, that we, as human beings, you know, our fundamental wish is to benefit others. be of benefit, and the sum total of things to be giving rather than taking, to be benefiting rather than harming.

[14:40]

How do we do that? So it comes up very simply when people I remember when I started meditating, people would say, why are you meditating? It's very hard to explain. Well, I feel like it. Well, what do you get out of it? I don't know. I don't know that I have anything to show for it. And it's only gotten worse. No, I was just invited to Wales to give a talk about what I do. I do not doing. I've had a lot of experience sitting still, not moving, not talking. Probably about 30,000 hours.

[15:44]

10,000 hours makes you a virtuoso. according to Malcolm Gladwell, you know? 30,000? I don't know. Maybe after the first 10, you're like, that's true. Can't keep from kicking over a cup of water. Oh, well. But I was in a room full of people who have... You know, one man has started, he had on, most people had, you know, video screen presentations about what they do, not just, I thought, I'm not going there. I don't know how to do this, you know, self-promotion. What do you do? Where were you? So I put a lot of attention and I didn't know how to explain this to people.

[16:50]

what I'm not doing. This is, of course, a classic in Zen. The teacher who asked his student, what are you doing, when he was meditating, and the student said, I'm not doing anything. And the teacher says, if you're not doing anything, you're wasting your time. And the student says, no, if I was doing something, that would be a waste of time. Then the teacher says, well, tell me more about what you're not doing. And the student says, even a thousand sages couldn't say. I can't tell you much about this not doing, but there's something to be said for not doing, so I want to tell you a little bit about this. I'm putting it in this context of where do you have your attention? And in our culture, of course, most of the attention goes to what we call left brain.

[17:57]

What do you do to get the maximum return? What do you need to fix? What do you need to take care of? How are you going to get the most out of this situation? Do you have the credentials that you need to go forward in your life? You need more schooling. You need, you know, what do you need? I have a friend from high school, and the last time I saw him I haven't seen him since. We had dinner and drinks, and he has a beautiful house overlooking the bay. He's a retired Superior Court judge. And at some point in the evening he said, Ed, it's too bad you haven't done anything with your life. 30,000 hours, it does not count.

[19:00]

Once you have to show, you need show for it, show for it. And, you know, five or six cookbooks and a book of lectures by a Zen teacher and, you know, what does it matter, you know? You haven't done anything. I was starting to tell you one of the men at the due lectures, he showed on the video a plaque that his wife and friends made up for him at the age of 50, all the business cards for all the companies he'd started. Very impressive. I haven't started anything. And then, of course, once you start something, what have you done for me lately? What was the last thing you started? So you can easily get into whatever you've done is probably still not enough. So I've found sometimes I don't know how to speak to this world.

[20:05]

I'm in a different world. I'm not in the world that emphasizes what have you done, what do you get out of it, what do you have to show for it. This is why they say, you know, empty hand. But I can hold you all in this space. I can give my attention to a room and feel. I know how to do that. And to hold you, you know, in my heart, in sacred space. Sacred space is not the same as secular space. Secular space is bottom line. What do you get out of it? What do you get back? What does it do for you? And sacred space is more like, where do you give your attention?

[21:11]

How do you express yourself? Are you... And it's the shift from mind of exploitation to the mind of nurturing. How will you take care of your life, your body, your breath? How will you take care of your feelings, your thoughts? What will you do with them? Do you tell the ones that are a little unpleasant, you say, go away, I don't want to have anything to do with you. You're not welcome around here. Because... I'm setting up a space where only nice things are. Do you want to listen? Do you listen to someone who's sick, someone who's not well, someone who's having a hard time, somebody who's struggling? Can you give yourself, when you're having difficulty, give some attention to yourself? Sit with this person. Breathe with this person.

[22:14]

Yeah, so this is, again, you know, this is not something you do just in one moment, but over time you can turn toward how to nurture, how to care, how to tend your body, your being, your emotional body, your mental body, your physical body. You know, know what's in your heart. You know, open your heart, clear your heart. So I do want to tell you a bit more then about, you know, and a little connection to the Western world culture. Two or three years ago there was a very interesting article I found in the New Yorker magazine about intuition, insight. It described how in 1948 there was a forest fire in Montana and

[23:47]

Thirteen fire jumpers and a leader parachuted. And at some point they were on the hill across the valley from the flames. The wind shifted and the flames blew across the valley and started blowing up the hill. And most of them died. The man who was in charge of the group had a brainstorm. He took out a lighter from his pocket and lit the grass on the hillside, so it burned ahead of him. Then he got into the burned out area, and the flames from down below went over that, past him. And he survived. Following the normal course, you know, we start to run. Somehow he had a kind of presence of mind, and it's not something you figure out.

[24:51]

He didn't come up with this idea by figuring it out, by knowing what you're supposed to do in the situation. It's something that occurred to him outside of, you know, the, here's what you do, here's when you do it. Sometimes I say to myself when I do something, what were you thinking? You know, we say this to one another, what were you thinking? And then we say, why weren't you thinking? Which is it? But he had this inspiration. So science has studied these things, and the inspiration, you see, comes from the other side of the brain. And inspiration only comes when the figuring outside of the brain is quiet. And then the other side of the brain, something can flash. So now scientists say the key is to concentrate and focus on letting your mind wander.

[25:58]

So this has something to do, I'm saying today, with not doing. Not figuring, not thinking, not scheming, not planning, not figuring out the bottom line, but can I be with things and can something occur to me to do? Receiving all the information, but without so much thinking, respond. And I think we, and this is something to do with trust, you know, can you Can you trust what occurs to you to do in response to the moment? Or do you say, I better be careful and do what I'm supposed to here. So this is very interesting, you see. Where does our attention go? And then, is there really someone in charge of me that would tell me what to do or not do?

[27:14]

Who would that be? So in the so-called, you know, the intuitive side of the consciousness or the insight, the inspiration, is not something that can be figured out. And our culture doesn't acknowledge. You know, it's a little bit like the studies now that show that boredom is really important.

[28:17]

And if you're never bored... Your consciousness doesn't have nearly as much time to figure things out as it really needs. Your consciousness beneath the surface apparently is really busy when you're bored. It's just not engaged consciously. So it turns out there's a great value to being bored. There's a great value to not being continually engaged in this doing that is the left side of the brain. getting this done, getting that done, taking, I mean, it's important. How are you going to pay your bills if you don't, you know? How are you going to have, live in our culture? You need to do a lot, we all need to do a lot of get this done, make this happen, take care of it. But if that's all you're doing, then what about your insight, your inspiration, your intuition? You'll be without it, you know? So one way or another, there's something to be said for being able to focus, put your attention someplace where your attention is not being grabbed, but to have choice and put it here and put it there, and giving your attention with some warm heart, warm heartedness, some tenderness, some kindness.

[29:44]

How is your breath right now? How is your body? How is your face? How are your hips, you know, on the chair or the cushion? How are you doing? And making yourself at home, right where you are. How about that? And when you're at home and you're not too busy, something can occur to you. What would I like to do? What would be helpful for me? What would be helpful for you, for my family, for my friends?

[30:47]

And different people, you know, have different things that, we have different things that come to us. I can't, as some of you were probably here last September when I tried singing the Four Vows, and you know I can't carry a tune. Several people noticed that. I couldn't tell. So, in other words, I don't have music coming to me. You know, songs, melodies, songs. I'm not, you know, I'm certainly, you know, I mean, Mozart, there's people who have all kinds of music. Music comes to them, you know. I have a friend in Portland who's a composer. Music comes to her. Music comes to her. And some people have pictures and images. Some people have sounds. I'm more capable of having feelings, connecting to emotions, feelings in the air, what's in the room.

[32:02]

But each of us has our own style then, or we're finding our own style, which is finding how our own heart would be moved to express itself. And the heart's expression is not something that is, you should this, you shouldn't that, you have to this, you better not that. Your heart is just moved. And so that movement, again, is right brain, inspiration, intuition, insight. That's the heart's side. And of course, in the long run, we want some balance, body, mind, spirit. but most of us need to put some emphasis, at least for a while, on can I be not so busy? And classically, when people write about these things in the article in the New Yorker mentioned, the bath goes back to Archimedes.

[33:16]

You get these inspirations when you're in the tub. You get inspirations when you go for a walk. You get inspiration when you get on and off the bus. Somehow that's just classically a time when people get inspired. They're stepping onto the bus, yet they have enough, you know, and what has been of concern and what you can't figure out keeps on, you know, is happening, but it's in the back. And then something occurs to you when you're not expecting it. So in this way, in our life, you know, we sit with things or we live with things that are unresolvable, maybe for some time, and then one day something occurs to us, comes to us. We didn't, we just stayed, we kept it long enough, you know, that something is resolved, something shifts, and we hold something in our heart in a larger way.

[34:26]

Some response to the situation comes to us. And we know what to do. And we can do it. And, you know, that knowing what to do and doing it, we can't demand that that happen. I want that to happen now. I've tried it. I don't know, maybe it'll work for you. It didn't work for me. Hmm. So I think I've told you pretty much what I want to express today.

[36:20]

Not much help, is it? I used to, you know, there was a period of time when I'd give a... Zen talk, you know, and I'd want everybody to get enlightened on the spot. I've lowered my standards. It's none of my business. You hear what you hear and something happens or not, you know, and you receive the sounds, the words, and you do you with what I say.

[37:24]

So I'd like to share with you one of my favorite poems. I just was in England for a little bit three weeks. And in London, somebody had emailed me and he said, while you're here, I have something that I do with people. It's called Read Me Something You Love. And would you do this with me? And I podcast them. So he does this with various people. He's done this. So I'm one of his podcasts. So I'm going to tell you the poem that that I read to Steve Watserman. What an enjoyable thing to do. I mean, he's also a professor and what have you. I think he teaches English to foreigners and what have you.

[38:25]

But then for the fun of it, he has people read him something they love and he records it and then he talks with you for a little while. We talked for about half an hour. Then he had to go do his class So I thought when, to redeem something that I love, I thought of this poem by Rumi. And it's a, Steve, I mean, it's a Coleman Barks, you know, translation. And in its way, you know, it has, it's referencing what I've been talking about. Where will you put your attention? What captivates or grabs our attention? And when our attention is captivated or grabbed on one hand, it's great, isn't it? But at some point you go like, wait a minute, I want it back.

[39:26]

I want my attention back. Why is it always going to this same worry that I don't know what to do about? And why is it always going to this anxiety or this stress or this problem? somebody I saw in England, why is my attention always going to how much I love this monk who's, you know, dedicating his life to being celibate. I want it back, but it's pretty nice, but I want it back. What shall I do? So the poem by Rumi is called Story, Story Water. It's Coleman Burke's title and translation. A story is like water that you heat for your bath. It takes messages from the fire to your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you.

[40:29]

Very few of us can sit down directly in the fire, like Abraham or a salamander. We need intermediaries. A feeling of fullness comes. Usually it takes some bread to bring it. Beauty surrounds us. Usually we need to walk in a garden to know it. The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that's blazing inside your presence. Stories water the body. All the things we do are screens that hide and mediums that hide and show what's hidden. Study these and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know and then don't.

[41:37]

Shall I tell it to you again? Twice is usually good. I could change some of the lines too. A story is like water you heat for your bath. It takes messages from the fire to your skin. It lets them meet and it cleans you. Very few of us can sit down directly in a fire like Abraham. or salamander, we need intermediaries. A feeling of fullness comes. Usually it takes some bread to bring it. Beauty surrounds us. Often we need to walk in a garden to know it. The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that's blazing inside your presence.

[42:43]

Stories, water, the body, all the things we do are mediums that hide and show what's hidden. Study these and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know and then don't. I like that poem for many reasons. Today, that feels like the space we're sitting in. We know something, we don't know something. We're sitting with the bread in the garden. And sometimes we can touch it, sometimes we can't. Sometimes we know it, sometimes we don't. Is there some way to be at home?

[43:47]

Can you make yourself at home in this space? The space of a human life, a human heart. Your life, your heart. I wish you well with this. Thank you, blessings. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:34]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.58